Hiroshi

Edge Magazine

This isn’t a game that redefines the genre: this is one that rolls it up and locks it away.

1UP

Takes everything its predecessor did and maintains that urgent sense of wonder and discovery, creating a world that copies its past self, yet keeps the freshness that made it so exciting when the first game debuted two years ago.

IGN

Consider me “wowed.” Again. Yes, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is more of what made the original so amazingly good: brilliant gravity platfoming. Incredibly tight and responsive controls. Fantastic musical score. But it’s not a “me too” experience -- a significant majority of this sequel is brand new.

Games Radar (in-house)

Expanding on the original’s brilliance, this ingenious platformer only gets better by embracing the Wii’s limited capabilities and adds so many ideas, big and small, that we can’t help but love it. Even if you (mistakenly) believe it’s too similar to the first game, what’s wrong with more of an incredibly great thing?

The Escapist

Super Mario Galaxy 2 doesn't tinker with the established formula very much, but we didn't really want it to. It's huge, brilliant, and gorgeous. It's why you started playing videogames in the first place.

Digital Chumps

Even the harshest critics will struggle to find fault in its symphony of imagination, execution, and polish, while fans will cherish its brilliance for years to come as one of the very best games in history. Quite simply put, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the reason I still play videogames.

Kombo

Super Mario Galaxy was a triumph, but the sequel manages to take things to a new level of excellence by adding new material as well as fixing elements that, in hindsight, did not appear to be broken.

Giant Bomb

For all the meaningful changes and additions that have been made, this is still more Super Mario Galaxy--which is to say that it looks and sounds about as good as a game for the Wii ever has, with consistently inventive level design, and exceptionally responsive gameplay.

GameSpot

Super Mario Galaxy 2 is simply an outstanding game. It never rests on its laurels for a second, constantly presenting new objectives and mechanics to push you to never before seen places. Even the two-player mode offers new abilities and delights, making it even more fun to play with a friend by your side.

Nintendo Life

Every once in a while a video game comes along that's just so spectacular that it ends up defining the very system it's released on and raises the bar by which all other games in the series and genre will be judged. It's safe to say that game has now arrived on the Wii console.

Kikizo

A whiff of expansion packishness aside, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is another breath of fresh air in an oppressively and perhaps misguidedly ‘mature’ gaming climate, a chubby, blue-eyed God among chest-bumping, photorealism-brown, cover-seeking insects. Whether you own a Wii or not, there are, quite frankly, no excuses.

Destructoid

They poured in the same creativity and imagination that made me fall in love with games like Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World. To me it feels like they finally felt the freedom and comfort in 3D platforming to get back to that Nintendo magic that we all remember. The end result is a galaxy of surprise after surprise, all coming together in a game that tops even my past favorites, making this the best Mario game Nintendo has released.

The Onion (A.V. Club)

It’s confounding how this simple world can evoke feelings of curiosity, wonder, and dread all at once.

Eurogamer

A simple extension of the Galaxy concept, Super Mario Galaxy 2 can't possibly have the same impact. But it does have the same spirit, throwing new ideas at you with gleeful and impulsive abandon, leaving you breathless, scrambling happily to keep up.

Telegraph

For a game that runs so wild with imagination, it’s remarkable to witness everything executed with such elegance... Nintendo has drawn a giant, gleeful gallery of magnificent pictures and painted within the lines, all intoxicating detail and colour. It’s a toy box full of childlike wonder, but with a grown-up sensibility, where the pieces all fit.

Eurogamer Portugal

The constant challenge provided (especially towards the end) joined with the ever-changing genres and challenges make Super Mario Galaxy 2 an exceptional game.

games(TM)

No matter which side of the gaming coin you come from, this whole new universe of planets is the most inventive, exuberant and, yes, fun set of challenges and diversions yet seen in the platform game genre. It miraculously outclasses a game that many believed could not be bettered, and once again leaves us wondering just how close Nintendo’s bar has come to reaching its theoretical peak.

Cheat Code Central

One of the best qualities of SMG2 is the speedy gameplay and the multitude of levels spread out into several different worlds within an ever-expansive universe. Even when you think you're done, you'll realize there are plenty of unlockable galaxies you'll get to explore with time.

Official Nintendo Magazine UK

If you loved Galaxy you'll adore this. Yet another dazzling high-water mark in Mario's career. [June 2010, p.75]

GameTrailers

There is more creativity in some single stages in this game than in entire other games. It's a bit familiar, but all the fat has been cut away to expose a pure gaming core. There's something for just about everyone and games that we can truly recommend to almost everyone are rare.

NintendoWorldReport

It is the truest sequel Nintendo has produced in over a decade.

Worth Playing

While Super Mario Galaxy 2 could easily have been a cheap cash-in with a few lackluster additional levels, it manages to be something more. It expands on the gameplay of Super Mario Galaxy and adds enough new twists and turns to feel like a full-fledged sequel.

Computer and Video Games

More imaginative, more challenging, more fun... more of the (brilliant) same.

Game Informer

Super Mario Galaxy 2 throws something new at you nearly every single level - and with over 240 stars to collect, that's no small feat. [Issue#206, p.94]

Wired

Simultaneously more and less than its predecessor. It expands and elaborates on the gameplay in unpredictable ways, but the last one felt like a bigger, more complete adventure. That said, better core gameplay with less window dressing is infinitely preferable to the reverse.

GamePro

Galaxy 2 is a constant deluge of fresh ideas that are successful -- not because of its place in a franchise -- but because it is wholly willing to reinvent itself on the fly.

GameDaily

Super Mario Galaxy 2 is largely more of the same, and that helps make it a phenomenal experience. Nintendo didn't reinvent the formula. Instead, it took what fans loved about the prequel and then jazzed everything up with never before seen galaxies, planets and a more streamlined user interface.